ANGLETON, Texas — Friday’s storms made several people seek shelter inside Mulligan’s Golf Center in Angleton.
Employees brought customers to safety while strong winds tore down the walls and took down two exterior walls at the shop.
Owner Lonnie Cagle said it’s emotional to survey the damage to the golf center he opened five years ago.
“It’s my life, I spent a lot of time building it, I was hands on,” Cagle said as he surveyed and cleaned up the damage from Friday’s storms. Cagle said he had worked as a contractor most of his life before making Mulligan’s into his business.
“Me and my wife, this was what we put together as an idea of our retirement so we invested everything we had into this,” Cagle said.
He left the shop on Friday to get dinner at home. Employees like Nathan Napoli and Colt Land were inside while the storms rolled in.
‘It was my second night working here…I was in shock,” Napoli said. The calm skies quickly turned into hail, so the workers tried to get everyone inside as the storm intensified.
“As soon as I got to the [front] door all the glass fell,” Land said. “We started pulling stuff out of the cooler to get as many people as we could,”
Land said they also went to the upstairs part of the golf center to make sure customers and employees were accounted for.
Cagle is thankful his employees acted quickly.
“We didn’t tell them to do it, they did that. We had families say if they haven’t done that, we don’t know what would’ve happened,” Cagle said.
Employees like Land were on site Saturday helping to clean up the damages. Cagle saID he has received several messages from people asking if they can lend equipment to help in the clean-up.
“We’re going to try and put it back together, try to move forward, that’s all we can do. It’s a rough road, but we’re going to try,” Cagle said.